Theresa may

Thursday

Katherine Forster

Starting again at 48

My name is Katherine and I’m an intern at The Spectator. What does that say about me? If you had to guess, you’d probably assume I was just finishing university and that I’m perhaps the niece or goddaughter of someone important. Because that’s how the media works, isn’t it? That I’m probably unpaid, but it doesn’t matter because my parents will sort me out — that’s if they didn’t buy this internship for me in a charity auction in the first place. And to be honest, that’s exactly how I imagined interns, too. Yet here I am, a 48-year-old mother of three. I felt embarrassed telling my husband I was

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

PMQs Sketch: Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn are back in control

Mrs May was back to her former self today. Cool, brusque, snappy and effective. Electoral disaster has served her well. Is it possible she planned this all along? Having brilliantly sacrificed her majority, she’s now indispensable to her weakened party. Her lack of defences defends her. Just one Commons defeat and Corbyn could walk into Number 10. The Labour leader was transformed too. The vegan diet appears to have drawn a circle of spiritual detachment around him. He didn’t get narked today. He wasn’t petulant or hoity-toity. He didn’t rant or snarl. The wheedling note of the dentist’s drill never entered his voice. He seemed measured and in control. Smooth,

Katy Balls Katy Balls

May fried over public sector pay at PMQs

Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May spent their lunchtime talking about McDonalds. Unfortunately for the Prime Minister, it was McStrike, rather than a lunchtime order, that dominated her first PMQs since the summer recess. Asked to show support for those workers currently taking industrial action against the fast food giant, May would only say that it was a matter for McDonalds – before going on to attack Labour for not doing more to tackle zero hour contracts when they were in government. This felt evasive and allowed Corbyn to go on and pit her against the side of the workers when he asked about the government’s diluted plans to crackdown on corporate excess. Although Corbyn

Tuesday

Steerpike

Jacob Rees-Mogg drops a hint about what job he wants in the reshuffle

Although Jacob Rees-Mogg likes to insist that he is an unsuitable candidate for the role of Prime Minister, he still manages to fit in an impressive number of media appearances, public speaking engagements and constituency visits for your average backbencher. Tonight Rees-Mogg descended on the Boothroyd room in Portcullis House for a Conservative Voice event to share his thoughts on the state of his party. He criticised CCHQ for taking power away from local associations, praised the work of volunteers in the election campaign and called for a manifesto at the next election that would not be met with surprise by Tory members. Asked in the Q&A whether he would rule out entering

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Theresa May is right to think there’s more to life than Brexit

The general election in June changed the politics of Brexit in ways that some pro-Leave commentators are desperately trying to ignore but which anyone actually doing politics has now accepted: ‘no deal’ is not an option, because there is not a Commons majority that would accept the steep drop out of the EU onto the rocks of the jagged WTO rules below. There certainly isn’t a majority in the country for that option, and a PM who tried to sell a ‘no deal’ Brexit would be asking for removal and possibly an election the Tories could lose. There will be a deal, in the end, because the Conservative Party, despite its

Monday

Isabel Hardman

MPs hold breath for cross-party social care talks

Theresa May created many problems for herself in this year’s snap election. Some are rather difficult to ignore, like fewer MPs and no Conservative majority. Others are very tempting and advantageous to ignore, like social care. The botched manifesto proposal on the long-term funding of social care has made reform even less attractive to politicians who were already minded to set up as many independent reviews and commissions as possible in order to avoid telling the public that this is going to cost a lot of money to fix. Meanwhile the sector is even more on its knees than it was before. Crises don’t get better just because politicians ignore

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Should Tory MPs want a reshuffle promotion from Theresa May anyway?

Who does Theresa May want to promote in her reshuffle? On our Coffee House Shots podcast today, we discuss how the Prime Minister actually feels powerful enough to even consider moving ministers around, and why she might want to delay that reshuffle for as long as possible. But there’s another question worth asking, which is who wants to accept Theresa May’s offer of a promotion? One of the names being mooted is Tom Tugendhat, currently the chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. Tugendhat has only recently taken that position, but it wouldn’t be an unprecedented move: Rory Stewart left his position as Defence Select Committee chair in 2015 after

Katy Balls Katy Balls

Should Theresa May reshuffle her Cabinet?

When Parliament returns tomorrow, Theresa May will come back to work to find her position a bit more secure than it was when she left for the summer break. With no obvious leadership challenger and her party vaguely united behind her, May looks safe in No 10 in the coming months – even if her claim that she could lead her party into another election looks dubious at best. It follows that talk has now turned to how she could shore up her position and assert her authority on her party. The Times reports that the prime minister and her allies are planning to use the threat of a reshuffle to further

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Why a reshuffle isn’t the answer for the PM

Britain will have to pay some kind of Brexit bill to leave the EU, accepts the Sun. But that shouldn’t mean having to ‘pay a penny more than is due’. The Sunday Times reported yesterday that Theresa May is considering offering £50bn to keep Brussels happy. The Sun has a simple message: we hope that Brexit secretary David Davis is telling the truth when he describes such reports as nonsense. It’s not only the PM who comes under pressure in the Sun’s editorial today; the paper also takes aim at Brexit chief negotiator Michel Barnier for saying the UK needs ‘educating’ about the price of leaving the EU. ‘Perhaps some

Saturday

James Forsyth

What did Theresa May mean by that?

Even some senior figures in Downing Street were unaware that Theresa May was going to say she wanted to lead the Tories into the next election, I write in the Sun this morning. The Prime Minister’s statement took Westminster by surprise. But even inside Number 10 there are doubts as to how seriously to take what she said. Indeed, I haven’t yet spoken to anyone who is genuinely convinced that she will lead the Tories into the next general election campaign. (Tory MPs were so calm about what May said precisely because they don’t think it is actually going to happen.) I think it is fair to say that May’s

Friday

Isabel Hardman

How Theresa May plans to sneak policies past MPs

If Theresa May is in it for the ‘long term’, does this mean that she plans to do big things with her premiership? The Prime Minister promised a great deal when she stood on the steps of Downing Street over a year ago, but has so far delivered a snap election which messed up her chances of actually achieving what she promised. She now has to rely on a party which doesn’t share all of her values – the DUP – or the good will of Labour MPs who happen to support what she wants to do. But this is all about May’s weakness in the House of Commons Chamber.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Senior Tories oddly supportive of Theresa May’s plan to stay

Theresa May’s announcement that she plans to serve as Prime Minister for ‘the long term’ has come as rather a surprise to her party. Cabinet ministers and senior backbenchers had hoped that all the talk of her sell-by-date and a leadership contest would have faded in time for the autumn, but this has stirred it up again. There are two schools of thought in the party as to whether the Prime Minister went into her interview yesterday intending to give a stronger line on whether or not she was going to leave. By and large those who are most unimpressed by the way she has led up to this point

Nick Hilton Nick Hilton

The Spectator Podcast: Can you forgive her?

On this week’s Spectator Podcast, we ask whether Theresa May can be absolved by her party and the public. We’ll also be looking at the controversial practice of trail hunting, and considering how we might enjoy better lunches at our desks. First up, since blowing her party’s majority with an unnecessary snap election, Theresa May has appeared to be on borrowed time. But with tricky Brexit negotiations ongoing, could she offer the stability the Tories so desperately crave? And can her colleagues forgive her for a calamitous campaign? Isabel Hardman asks these questions in the magazine this week, and she joins the podcast along with Fraser Nelson. As Isabel writes: “Refreshed from walking in the Alps,

James Kirkup James Kirkup

Neither May nor Corbyn will fight the next election

I’ve been arguing since June that it is at least possible that Theresa May could remain in office longer than the Westminster village consensus dictated, so I’m not too surprised by her statement of intent in Japan. Besides, what else could she say? Like most people, I still don’t expect her to fight the next election, but if she does manage the sort of transformative dogged resurrection I wrote about in June, it could just be possible. For now though, what will hold her in place will be not so much her own talents (whatever they may be) but her party’s fear of confronting the huge and possibly existential questions

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Theresa May wants to spend her political capital in an odd way

What on earth is Theresa May up to? The Prime Minister seemed to have successfully calmed things down in the Tory party following her disastrous snap election. But now she has thrown everything wide open again by telling reporters that she would like to fight the next election and that she is her ‘for the long term’. The ‘do you want to fight the next election’ question is a tricky one for Prime Ministers to answer. Say ‘no’ and you become a lame duck. Normally saying ‘yes’ makes more sense, even if you’re secretly planning to scarper before there is another campaign. But May had already cast herself as a

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Theresa May’s vow to fight the next election changes nothing

Theresa May’s ability to survive the summer has emboldened her to stay on in Downing Street and fight the next election. That, at least, is what is being read into the Prime Minister’s remarks during her trip to Japan that she is in it ‘for the long term’. In fact, while it might seem that another dose of mountain air has strengthened the PM’s resolve, little has changed about May’s plan for the future. And by saying that she isn’t quitting any time soon, the PM is just stating the obvious. In the days after the election, Theresa May told MPs: I will serve as long as you want me.

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

May’s opponents are the mad and the bad

I first met Theresa May, or met her properly, way back in the last century. I’d been invited to speak at a constituency dinner for Maidenhead Conservatives on a Saturday night, and sat at her table. She was with her husband, Philip; I remember only my suspicion that he didn’t desperately want to be there. Of her I remember the pallor, and a certain shyness; but the couple were pleasant and welcoming to me, and as I’m not one to pump people for political news and gossip, and she isn’t one to volunteer such things, this was not the sort of evening that would have prompted an entry in the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Theresa May’s great comeback is now underway

Theresa May has always made her holidays sound as sensible and lacking in exoticism as she is. But something strange happens to the Prime Minister when she takes a break. After her last break, she decided she wanted a snap election. Now she’s back from the three-week holiday that was supposed to help the Conservative party calm down, and she’s declaring that she is here ‘for the long term’ and that she does want to fight the next election for the Conservatives. Her colleagues had urged her to take a long break this summer. They might now start getting a little suspicious when their leader next starts talking about some

Wednesday

Dan Hitchens

Theresa May’s climbdown on corporate excess is a major retreat for the Tories

‘Mayism’, whether it left you in admiration or despair, at least seemed like an identifiable philosophy. It was concerned with social justice, but it wasn’t socialist: it was better described as post-liberal. Mayism was sceptical of free markets, which were prey to ‘selfish individualism’ (as the manifesto put it), but it didn’t see big government as the answer. It preferred to spread economic power, by clamping down on corporate malpractice and giving new rights to workers. And the symbol of this – until yesterday when the Tories pretty much dropped the proposal – was the idea of putting workers on company boards. To be exact, the idea has not been

Matthew Lynn Matthew Lynn

Britain should pay a Brexit bill – but only on one condition

Fifty billion? Seventy-five? In its wilder moments, the FT might even splash on a hundred billion pounds as the minimum cost of our exit from the European Union. As the negotiations over our departure reach perhaps the thorniest issue of all, the final bill will have to be settled. But what should it be? If the hardliners on both side would calm down for a moment, then the answer should be very simple. We should agree to cover the cost of the disruption our departure creates, but only in return for a fair deal on trade. It is probably a mystery to most people why we have to pay anything